“Dammit, I’m Mad” is a Palindrome
A forthcoming novel from the fabric of the id.
I’m really sick of anger. I’m sick of finding it in myself, in people I love, in people who love them, and in the waves of frustration and pain that drive hate through its generational ley lines.
It’s everywhere, and it’s fucking everything up. I wrote a book about it.
Autofiction is a fun word we like to use a lot lately, and I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not it applies here. I haven’t written a true self-insert since we were still reading fanfiction on Quizilla, but when I look back through Margot & co. from here, hands-off and fresh-eyed, there is a staggering amount of selfhood here.
The difference between “myself” and “selfhood” makes perfect sense to me internally, but I’m not wise enough yet to put words to it. All I know is that each character has some shard of me in their genesis, and because of that it became the most affirming story I’ve ever written—it just took a few rounds to uncover exactly what I was trying to say with it.
The author Isle McElroy recently wrote on external validation and chasing fixations to ensure the reasons for creative pursuit remain self-first. Their sentiment of “writing alongside obsessions” is a powerful one. As I’ve been dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s here, I can see clearly in all the peaks and valleys of this book how the carrots-on-sticks I used to move the cart forward became threads of story out of that integral stage of play.
Margaret and Wesley were opera singers, because I was on a Puccini kick the summer of 2021 (and professional vocalists : drama :: water : life). The “backstage” element of a mob plot afoot throughout Margaret’s odyssey of stasis in the desert came in because I impulsively re-watched Scorsese’s Casino at my lowest rock bottom and it made me feel something for the first time in days. Edie Bishop used to be a real asshole to Margaret because I needed to get myself back in therapy. The list goes on.
I find myself obsessed with anger lately, because it’s impossible not to witness. Anger surrounds this novel at a simmer until it explodes—the fuel in its engine was pried from the careful cannibalization of my own overfilled powder keg. The core cast of Margaret Wolf is made up of twice-shy dogs gnashing at the hands trying finally to feed instead of strike. Two objectified people find solace in each other (and a dubiously-moraled Hays Code bisexual right out of a Leyendecker ad), and they dare to persist as one.
I started writing the initial sketches of this story at a time I felt deeply bereft of belonging, and its structure is still a sheer boning of loneliness that used to prop up far more of my reasons for picking up the pen in the first place. Reading through a finished copy is like delving into a treasure box of everything I spent a very long time never letting myself say or want or even acknowledge from those low-begotten annals of the self: my shame, my disgust, my deepest fears, desires both strange and needful, all of it mine. If there is anything pulled directly from my DNA in this book, it is this finely-ground sand of numerous griefs, stricken and forged into a keen-edged form by the lightning heat of rage.
Womanhood is armor to me. The Almighty Image and the attendance to its rituals used to make me hate myself because it felt like I wasn’t doing any of it right, but now femininity to me is a precious outlet through which I access power and a unique freedom of expression. It’s still a performance, but I’ve finally found a way to enjoy it. I’ve tended a sense of self-possession and confidence in moving through the world as a woman against the ugliness we’re made to face, and face, and face again.
Femininity is complicated. I’ve done my best to decorate Margot’s narration with all the necessary anxieties and instinctive twinges and absolute fucking inanities we’re conditioned to let drive us as people who are not men. I wanted it to feel equally as impossible for readers to look away from or escape the feeling of the unseen gaze as they follow along through Margaret’s eyes.
I’ve called this book an exorcism before, and I still think it's apt. I’ve felt for most of my life like I’ve been walking around with an open wound in my chest, silently begging people to look at it and tell me I’m special (or at least tell me what to do about it). The process of bringing this book into the light seems to have finally made the damn thing quit weeping and stay shut for once. Simple existence is less far of an effort for me, now couched in a profound and evidential peace.
Margaret Wolf is someone who tries and tries again to bear things the way they are, until it breaks her. The story is ultimately a costume of abject and sometimes grotesque fantasy, but the tag in its collar will make the very real message at its core clear to those familiar with the label.
Try it on. Your reflection might surprise you.